The inconsistent hype train

I think it’s a tad odd how excited I am for The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Well, I mean, no, it’s not odd at all. A new console Zelda is always a huge deal for Nintendo fanboys. What I mean is that it’s a much bigger deal for me than Twilight Princess was. Maybe I was so excited about the Wii launch that my hype for new Zelda was diminished a bit, but I don’t remember being nearly as excited for it as I am Skyward Sword. I know for sure that I wasn’t counting the days.

Then again, I don’t think I’ll ever be as excited for a game launch as I was for The Wind Waker.

Last week I did have the privilege to play the Skyward Sword E3 demo via my cousin’s husband’s (There’s gotta be a word for that. Cousband?) Homebrew Channel. Needless to say, it only served to get me more excited for the full game. And then they invited me over to play a leaked copy of said full game the next night. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever said no to, but the demo was already more than I should have played. Legends of Zelda are big things, and I decided to save myself so that I could savor it properly. I had a big ol’ sex metaphor ready to go here, but decided against actually typing it. You can see where I was going, so it shouldn’t be hard to figure it out yourself.

Anyway, I’m really kicking myself for not saving one or two vacation days for this. Yes, I’ll play all day long on Sunday, but after that I don’t even know when my next chance to see it will be. Thursday? Stupid work. I wish it would just go away for a while.

And for old times‘ sake: ZELDA COUNTDOWN : 4 DAYS REMAIN.

Holy peanut butter, Batman!

Years ago I would have tried to type up at least 1000 words about this sucker. Now I realize that the photos tell you pretty much all you need to know (and they’re worth approximately 3000 words). Except maybe the fact that eating one of these by yourself in a single sitting is probably a bad idea. That one should probably register under “common sense” though.

Better than good

I took a few pictures that night. This is the only one that even sort of turned out well.

You might think I’d have a lot to say about the concert, and maybe you’re wondering why I haven’t. It’s as simple as this: I don’t want to analyze it. There were good parts and parts I wondered about, but overall, Matthew Good was fantastic. It was the best concert I’ve ever been to, and I’m pretty sure it won’t be topped (unless Freddie Mercury comes back to life). It was everything I was hoping for and more. It was one of the best nights of my life, and I wish I had a DVD of it.

Attack of the Supper Squid

Ah, this November just gets better every day. Matthew Good was great of course, but I have even cooler news.

Remember how last year the kids at Talking Time made their own game with the Super Mario Bros X level editor? And how I was super excited about it? And how I contributed three levels of varying quality? Super Talking Time Bros. 2: SUPER SQUAD is now in production, and should be ready to roll early next year. I have of course submitted a stage, and the flame of my passion for creating Mario levels has been reignited.

The first stage I submitted is this one, and I quite like it. Zaidyer’s a fan too, which is good because he’s the project lead. It’s sort of ripped from my personal project, but totally redone. Because it sucked before. Now I’m pretty proud of it. It’s certainly more exciting than anything else I’ve made.

I submitted this one too, which I’m less proud of. I can’t exactly point out why I don’t like it much though. It was already made, I just changed the goal area to meet TTB2 requirements. Really I think I just submitted it because I wanted to have more than one level in the game. I think I’ll hit the drawing board again this weekend and put something better together.

My point here is that if you have a computer and even a mild sense of what would make a fun Mario level, participate! Even if your thing is a sucky bag of sucky suck, we have a peer review process that will help to make you a better level designer! It’s what kept the first game from being just another mess like RMN Bros. The original Super Talking Time Bros. sturned out great, and to be completely honest, I’m a little more excited about TTB2 than Super Mario 3D Land. Crazy, I know. But if you’re a Mario fan, you owe it to yourself to check these out.

Wishlist

So I’ve played a lot of video games over the course of my life up until now. Only now, real life gets in the way a lot and I spend a lot more time longing for video games than actually playing them. It’s a sad state of affairs, but it’s the way she goes. I’ve decided that for fun, I’m going to make a small list of game accomplishments I’d like to make in the next year. Keeping in mind of course, that this is the abriged version. I could go on for days about games I want to play.

Another note of minor importance is that these aren’t in any specific order. I’m just noting them as they come to me. Putting them in order would likely be impossible. Oh, and none of these are games that I’m actively playing. Most have been set aside in favour of other games, and a handful I haven’t even started playing.

  • Final Fantasy XIII : Defeat Vercingetorix
  • Final Fantasy XII : Complete the story / acquire all Espers
  • Final Fantasy VI DS : Complete the story
  • Dissidia: Final Fantasy : Earn “All characters at Lv50” accomplishment
  • Dissidia 012 : Start playing
  • Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together : Complete the story
  • Monster Hunter Freedom Unite : Complete offline quests
  • Monster Hunter Tri : Play it sometimes
  • Monster Hunter: Dynamic Hunting : Get all cheevos
  • Secret of Mana (iOS) : Complete the game
  • MadWorld : Complete the game
  • Little King’s Story : Complete the game
  • Epic Mickey : Complete the game
  • Earthbound : Play again
  • Super Mario Galaxy 2 : Find all green stars (June 11/12)
  • Pokémon White : Complete Unova Pokédex (Oct 6/12)
  • LEGO Rock Band : All single-player cheevos
  • Catherine : Complete the game on Normal difficulty
  • Guitar Hero Van Halen : Complete tour mode (May 23/12)
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D : Complete Master Quest
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker : Play again
  • Deadly Premonition : Start playing
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum : Start playing (Jan 2/12)
  • Fallout 3 : Complete the story (Jan 15/12)
  • Picross 3D : Complete all puzzles (May 14/12)
  • MegaMan Legends : play again (June 7/12)
  • Borderlands : Complete all story missions, all reasonable secondary missions
  • Luigi’s Mansion : Play again (Aug 29/12)
  • Pikmin 2 : Story mode full clear
  • Pikmin : Play again
  • New Super Mario Bros. Wii : Complete World 9

So yeah. Ain’t nobody can say I’m not a goal-oriented person. The relevance of my goals is questionable, but I have them. Game developers really should stop making new ones so I can catch up though. Maybe just put a freeze on new games for 2012? Not that it really matters. Once Super Mario 3D Land, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and Mario Kart 7 arrive, it’s all over anyway.

Bound for Earth

I think it’s probably been a whole week since I’ve told anybody how much I love Earthbound. That may sound silly, but if Stephanie were actually listening when I tell her about it, at this point she’d probably know just as much about the game as someone who’s played it. (Not that I mind her zoning out or anything. I rarely listen when she talks about shoes.)

I don’t really have anything planned today. I was just thinking about Mr. Saturn and how cool it would be to master handwriting the Mr. Saturn “dialect.”

I did have an Earthbound-related dream earlier this week though! It was kind of weird, because my party consisted of myself and Stephanie, with Jeff and Britta from Community. Maybe it wasn’t that weird. Steph’s in most of my dreams, and we watched the entirety of Community season 2 last week. I don’t remember exactly how the dream went down, but the first thing I remember was coming out of the cavern in Threed’s graveyard. We walked about the town for a bit and then headed northwest from the graveyard. Earthbound’s geography isn’t perfectly charted, but I surmise that we should have ended up somewhere in the vicinity of Happy Happy Village. Or back in Twoson, depending on how long that tunnel really is.

Where we really ended up though, was another village called “Frank.” The folks there were pretty average, and Frank (the character) was nowhere to be seen. The majority of the village was laid out along a single road, and had a sort of Japanese culture to it. That part is kind of weird because Earthbound is sort of a Japanese caricature of American culture. Anyway, the town ended up leading nowhere, or at least we didn’t venture past the end of the road. We headed back and on our way out I noticed that the village was actually populated with Happy-Happyists! Spooky.

That’s when I woke up. I’m not sure what the dream means. I’ve played Earthbound enough times to know that Frank (the village) does not exist. Maybe it’s my mind trying to convince (or remind?) me that there are still secrets that I haven’t found in the game. But I’ve played it several times, and have put a lot of effort into exploring the world thoroughly. Anything I didn’t find on my own I’m sure I’ve read about. If there are still things I don’t know about Earthbound, they’re probably pretty tiny.

Anyhow, I just figured I’d share that. It was a pretty cool dream.

Spamwich

I knew that having a blog that supported comments was going to invite spam, I just never expected it to be like this. Up until last weekend, it was pretty benign: a few trying to post ads, a few muttering nonsense. Harmelss little things that popped up once in a while.

I woke up on Tuesday morning to find 37 new messages in my inbox. Surely they couldn’t all be Amazon ads. Over the last three days I’ve been hammered with over 100 spam comments. And they’re all the same thing: all “people” with legit looking information and a silly message about how much they like my site. Only most of the messages are in broken English, and often they’ll say “what a great read that was” on a post that’s just an image. Also, the website of evey one of them ended with a 2K. While I knew they were all fake, that would have been the tip-off for someone less in-the-know.

So I’ve rigged my system so that you have to sign up to comment. I know that will dissuade real random visitors from commenting, but it must be done. It takes a long time to trash all those alert emails. I’ll try to find a better way, but for now that’s the best compromise I have between legions of spambots and disabling comments completely.

It makes me wonder though, what is the point of this kind of spam? There are no penis enlargement ads. Maybe the sites they claim to be from contain malicous things, but who clicks on those anyway? It’s pointless aside from wasting my time. Unless of course wasting my time is the point. In which case: well played, spammers. Well played.